Amazon’s big glitch
RN Lee’s Amazon Fail logo from Cheryl’s Musings. [source]
For those of you haven’t heard yet: Amazon stripped a bunch of books dealing with sexuality of their sales rankings, a manuever that disproportionately affected books addressing issues of interest to the glbtq community and/or involving glbtq characters. People on Smart Bitches Trashy Books launched a Google bomb, and tons of folks started calling, e-mailing and otherwise making their displeasure known directly to the retailer, who know claims that the whole mess was the result of “a glitch.”
While it is entirely plausible that this is/was a glitch of some kind, the company is going to have to do some fast talking to get out of this one; a glitch that disproportionately affects a sector of the population that is already marginalized is one sticky situation. And, a glitch that makes a bookseller look like they’re on some sort of Fahrenheit 451-style digital censorship campaign to keep the books all nice and kid-friendly is poor form regardless. A lengthy list of the books affected is available here from Jezebel.
I’m suspecting a Monday-morning press conference or other well intentioned media maneuvering, but time will tell.